Does anyone have examples of using social media to encourage involvement/engagement? Thinking about at least having a Facebook organization page...

I would not encourage use of these sites for your purpose. I have personally experience seeing explicit, vulgar pictures. I think you could come up with a "safer" way.

i set up a twitter for our pta and a parent set up a facebook site for our school (not directly linked to pta). there has been minimal involvement but mainly because of some old school thinking. hopefully that will change next year.

i think its great to reach out in as many ways as you can to attract the school/communities attention. flyers coming home get missed, even emails do, but making things easy for them to access - like a twitter account is a great step forward.

our education system and its surrounding resources are all still in an older generational pattern and need to change with the times.

I would not encourage use of these sites for your purpose. I have personally experience seeing explicit, vulgar pictures. I think you could come up with a "safer" way.

I've never seen anything on facebook or twitter that i haven't wanted to see. FB has many rules about posting inapprorpiate things and with Twitter, you have to click on links to be taken to such "inappropriate" pictures/links. You are the one in control of clicking.

I think this type of thinking is what leads to things not moving forward and adapting to change, to technology. People always fly the "inappropriate" flag and really, I think its more fear of change, of technology than anything else.

mluna-
We recently started a twitter feed: PTO Today (ptotoday) on Twitter

I have noticed that more schools and parent groups are using Twitter and Facebook to reach out to their community/parents. Seems to be gaining traction. Would suggest getting on Twitter & Facebook and searching on PTO, PTG, PTA group, etc to get an idea of how groups are using them.

Our editorial team is also researching the use of social media by parent groups and will keep you posted on our findings in an upcoming issue of our magazine and on the website.

We'd love to hear from more parent groups about how they are they are jumping into the social media craze!

Lisa

I am not only a first year president for this next school year but my first child is only going to be in 1st grade. I was bothered this year about the lack of parent involvement in school and wanted to do something about it. After researching I noticed a ton of parents had Facebook pages. So asked the other members of the board and our school principal about it and they said no problem (we just cannot use names or pics without parental consent) I started it a week ago and have received a great response. Parents love it. They can keep in touch with what is going on at school without worrying about losing the paper with the information or their child keeping them in the dark. So many parents work and are too busy to attend meetings or make appearences at school. This way its an easy way to stay connected. Some already have the schedule now for the next school year and know when meet the teacher night is!!!